


jump into that water and see for yourself

by Kealpos



Series: Author's Favorites [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Changing Tenses, Character Study, Dark Percy, F/M, Gen, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kealpos/pseuds/Kealpos
Summary: "So.""So.""What exactly brings you here today, Percy?"/Choosing good, even when the whole world screams for you to do otherwise.





	jump into that water and see for yourself

_ “So.” _

_ “So.” _

_ “What exactly brings you here today, Percy?” _

-

The first thing Percy thought after Tartarus was:  _ Man, am I glad that's over. I'm so exhausted. I need a tamale. I need my mom. I need my mom's tamales.  _

The second thing he thought was:  _ Oh. There's more monsters. It's fine it's fine it's fine thank gods for my friends they took care of it if I don't fight another monster for the rest of my life it'll still be too soon. _

The third thing Percy thought was:  _ I'm glad we're out. I don't know how much longer I could've taken it. I was already losing it. I hate Akhlys, so much. I hate Tartarus, and I hate Hera, and I hate myself. I lost the people who protected me. I scared Annabeth. _

The fourth thing he thought was:  _ I am never going to frighten Annabeth like that again. _

The fifth thing he thought was:  _ I don't know what happened to me, but I am not going to turn into a monster. I am not going to be a bad person. _

The sixth thing he thought was:  _ I would kill for a cheeseburger right now. _

The seventh thing he thought was:  _ Well, not kill. I don't want to kill. I don't want to hurt anyone or anything ever again, even if they are a monster. _

The eighth thing he thought was:  _ Oh, you know what I mean. _

The ninth thing he thought was:  _ Hm. I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass out now. _

The tenth thing he thought was:  _ [In a very decent impression of Grover Underwood for someone who hadn't seen him for around nine months] FOOOOOD! _

And then Percy Jackson's world went black when he, as predicted, passed out.

-

Question: if a person is evil, deep down inside, but they never show it, and they never think it, they only feel the evil coursing through their veins the temperature of dry ice and steaming off of them all the same, does that revelation make a sound?

Follow-up question: if there is someone who loves you, but you are evil, you are just abhorrent, but you keep yourself from leveling cities and hurting friends and indulging in the burning sensation, and you never tell them that you are evil from the inside out, can they really love you?

Follow-up question to the follow-up question: if Percy loves Annabeth, flocks to her like moths to a porch-light, like flies to a rotting carcass, like Persephone to not Hades but to the Pomegranate, and Annabeth is Good with a capital G, then why does Annabeth love him like a baby to a caring parent, like a flower to the sunshine, like Percy to Annabeth, because Annabeth is Good with a capital G and Percy, Percy is not?

-

When Percy wakes up, he wakes up in a cold sweat. His entire body hurts, and there are tears streaming down his face, and he is crying out for Annabeth.

In long, loud moans, he sobs out  _ Annabeth, Annabeth, where is she _ , broken up between heavy breaths and he tries to get out of his bed but when he stands up he falls to his knees and he cries, “Annabeth, where are you?”

There is frantic thumping and when his door pushes open Nico is there, grimacing. Nico helps him back into bed as he sobs messily into his shoulder as he groans,  _ gods, I wasn't this much of a mess when I got out. You're so disgusting, Jackson _ , but Nico is tender with him anyways and wipes away the sweat accumulated on his brow and tells him: “Percy, Annabeth is fine. She's in the room next door. Sleeping. Like you should be.” His tone goes flat and direct towards the end like he's angry at something and Percy thinks  _ be angry at me  _ but all Percy says back in response is “Okay,” and he has just enough time to say “Thanks, Nico,” before he's passing back out.

-

**a small list of things Percy Jackson dreams about:**

1\. He dreams about nothing. For a long time, there's a nothing. Just coal black coated in snow white and somehow the color it makes when combined makes sense to him. He thinks it’s cold. Somewhere, someone is in the nothing with him and that someone is shivering.

2\. Annabeth kissing him. He dreams about Annabeth  _ looking  _ at him with this… this… this  _ look _ on her face. She tucks her hair behind her ear, like she always does when she's nervous, and an errant, frizzy lock of hair pokes it head out to stare at him. She's in a blue jacket that smells like too much vinegar and her eyes sparkle but her ears don't. She's not wearing earrings. She is wearing a smile, sly and fun and Annabeth and Percy  _ loves  _ her, so he wraps his arms around her neck and she kisses him, kisses him, and kisses him a thousand times more and all the kisses overlap and overlay like he's watching an artist paint layers after layers on top of a canvas and he feels like if he sticks a finger out and drags down with his nail, all the paint will come off in thick curls, curls like Annabeth’s hair. Oh, gods, he never wants to stop kissing Annabeth.

3\. The wedding of Gabe Ugliano and Sally Jackson. Sally Jackson, poor (in the emotional sense) poor (in the fiscal sense) Sally Jackson. Orphan, single mother, disgrace alone in New York City. Her side of the chapel would be empty if it wasn't filled with Gabe’s family. All of his family is disgusting, and he's the most disgusting of them all. They hold it in a church at his demand, even though Mom isn't religious, and Mom wears a black dress like she's going to a funeral, not a wedding, not her wedding, and she's told everyone time and time again “My name is Sally Jackson. It will always be Sally Jackson. If you gave me the whole world as a bribe, I would still not change my name from Sally Jackson,” and Percy loves her. Percy stands right next to his momma the entire time in an itchy suit but he stands as firm as he can because his mom is counting on him. She doesn't have anyone else. He's her man-of-honor, and when Mom told Gabe this he laughed at her and said “Good! You won't be going anywhere then for a party,” and she pursed her lips at him and she and Percy went out and ate Greek food together and played at an arcade for hours and she was so good at Dance Dance Revolution. Sally smiles so few times even Percy can count to it, and he's only learned up to the one after fifty-four. She always smiles when she looks at Percy, though. Always. She cries a couple of times too. Percy asks her  _ what's wrong momma why are you sad is it because Gabe is horrible _ and Sally gets the strangest look on her face and replies  _ Percy sometimes when someone is so happy the only way they can let it out is through crying _ and he says  _ oh _ and she says  _ did you know, I cried so hard when you were born because I knew you were going to be the best thing in my life _ and Percy asks her  _ so you're crying because you're happy to be married to Gabe? _ and Mom just says  _ do you want some cake it's chocolate _ and later when they go home Percy lays with Mom in bed with Gabe passed out on the couch in their crappy two-room apartment with the pipes exposed and she whispers in his ear, when he's on the edge of sleep, “Sometimes you will lie. It will never feel good, but sometimes you need to. Lies of omission are still lies. I will always love you, no matter what happens, no matter what you do. This will never be a lie.”

4\. He dreams about choking Akhlys to death, and Annabeth's horrified face burns itself into the farthest edges of Percy's skull and Percy wishes he could dream about his mom some more.

-

When he wakes up again, he’s much calmer. He comes back to the land of the living gradually, with Piper over in a chair, nodding off, obviously put to the task of watching his progress. He swallows, his throat dry, and croaks out “Is Annabeth awake yet?”

Piper jumps to alertness, her hand swinging over to meet her knife, and then they catch each other’s eyes and hold the eye contact for five seconds straight until finally, finally, she laughs and relaxes. “Yeah.” She looks tired, but happy, too. “She woke up about two hours ago. That’s why I was put on watch. We figured if she was up it wouldn’t be much longer until you woke up too.”

He thinks about Annabeth without him, waiting for him to wake up, having to sit with everyone and act like she thought she should act, and he wasn’t there to help her. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs. In the kitchen. Ate approximately five hundred pancakes, and I cannot blame her. She almost clawed my eyes out when I tried to sneak a bite.” Pancakes. Chocolate chip. Blue. Orange juice. That’s what he wants. 

He pulls himself out of bed, moving slow due to the half-remembered pain of the first time he woke up, and Piper gets to her feet, coming over to him slowly as he struggles to push himself up. She offers her arm. He readily accepts.

As they walk up, slowly, slowly, Percy comes to the belated realization that he is not wearing the clothes he fell asleep in - the tattered, bloody, stinking clothing replaced with a bright red sweater, Canadians Do It In Metric emblazoned on the front, likely pilfered from Frank’s closet, and even likelier, the doing of Leo. He's practically swimming in it, and it's so big it almost covers up the basketball shorts he's wearing, courtesy of himself. They feel a little too small, however, so he hikes them up, and Piper says nothing.

When they step into the kitchen, the room falls silent. Most of the crew is already there, eating breakfast of some sort. Leo has a piece of bacon caught between his teeth, Jason is eating yogurt, Hazel’s got some sort of Raisin Bran looking cereal with the spoon held halfway to her mouth in shock while she stares at him. And there's Annabeth, hunched over the table with her head in her hands, with, what Percy guesses, are approximately five hundred pancakes in front of her. The room is still, as if no one wants to disturb it, and then Annabeth looks up because she's confused about the sudden silence, and he flings himself at her.

He crushes her in a wobbly hug which she reciprocates in tenfold, crushing his ribs, and when he buries his face in her hair, it smells like dirt, and blood, but most of all it smells like Annabeth.

After that, Percy eats approximately five hundred pancakes. He's kind of severely malnourished.

-

After a long breakfast of eating so much food and drinking so much water and leaning so much on each other and so many longing looks at the Camp Half-Blood windows, they are led up and out to the deck, out into the sunlight.

Percy hasn't felt the sunlight in so long. He closes his eyes, basking in it. Annabeth clutches his hand and he can tell she's doing the same. After several minutes like that, Percy finally realizes they’re on the water, and promptly runs to the edge of the deck and hurls himself off.

When he collapses into the water, the pressure feels like a hug. He breathes in with heavy pants, and he lets the water soak his hair, but only his hair. He grins at the wetness and tears spring to his eyes as he kicks back up to break through the shore. When he breaks through, he can hear Annabeth laughing, genuinely and happily laughing, and after a moment, sees her head poke over the edge and he grins madly at her and she back. A moment’s hesitation, but then he wills the water to push him back up and it complies more easily than it ever has in the past. When he stumbles back onto the deck with a surprised look on his face, the crew seems to reinterpret it as giddiness or dizziness or something, so when they clutch him in a hug he thinks about how he hadn't noticed that he didn’t have full ease with water until then, but now that he knew, it was so much better.

He swallows, and buries his soaking head into Frank’s shoulder.

-

**a small list of things Percy Jackson has nightmares about:**

1\. His dad. Poseidon is an easy-going guy, a pretty decent godly parent, but this time Percy thinks about storms and hurricanes and deadly walls of water splitting islands in two. All twelve-year-old Percy knew when he bled out on a javelin just in front of the water was that he had blown up a couple of toilets, Grover Underwood and Chiron had been keeping a specific eye on him because they thought something was special about him, and Annabeth Chase totally fucked him over. All he knew ten minutes later was that he was the illegal son of a god, the son of the Earthshaker, and he was scared. He dreamed about arenas filled with bones dedicated to Poseidon and him calling Percy his favorite son and he felt like he was drowning.

2\. Annabeth  _ looking  _ at him with a  _ look  _ and telling him she doesn’t love him anymore. Or that she still loves him, but they’re just too broken to keep going. He’s too broken. She’s too broken. He’s scared about Annabeth saying he doesn’t deserve her, and even more scared about Annabeth saying she doesn’t deserve him.

3\. Glass balls. Did you know that when you die, you could be cremated and your ashes could be used in a blown glass urn? No two glass creations are exactly the same. Did you know, if you push something with enough force, it will bend and snap and break right before your eyes? Pencils pushed to their fracturing point, splitting apart in two. He remembered Akhlys, he remembered wanting her to feel something that felt like the burning hole in his stomach, he remembered pushing and concentrating so hard something inside him cracked. Like a crystal ball. The thing with cracks, with things breaking apart desperately, messily, as he was pushing hard and quick because if he wasn't she would kill Annabeth, forcing it to split into jagged pieces, no fine control or gentleness to spare what breaks free, to make sure the glass pieces are large enough to see, to put forth a hope of salvaging what is broken - that's not something he was ever going to get back. Inside his stomach, a magic 8-ball breaks when he shakes it too hard, asking  _ is there something in me that’s still fixable after all of this? _ It shatters under his hand and leaks blue liquid and when it lands on the cement with a large crack put through it, it tells him ‘Outlook not so good.’

4\. Hazel telling him a child of Neptune caused the 1906 earthquake. Every person to ever call him the strongest demigod of the century. Him blowing up a volcano when he’s fifteen and almost wiping out half the country. That there is so much power in him. In some nightmares, he stands above a great stone ball that slowly rolls up. Sisyphus in reverse, always pushing it down. The crack in the dining hall of Camp Half-Blood because Nico may be able to control the Earth, but Percy is the son of the Earthshaker, and it’s easy to wonder if Nico can do that, what could Percy do if he really, for once in his life, applied himself.

5\. Akhlys. He always has nightmares about Akhlys. Another nightmare where he’s choking her on her poison but he stops at Annabeth’s terror-stricken face. Another nightmare where he went through with completely choking Akhlys despite Annabeth’s pleas - killing a god with her own domain with his own powers. Another nightmare where he doesn’t just ignore Annabeth crying, but he actually steals the tears off her face to contribute to the horrible deadly mixture forcing Akhlys to her knees. 

-

At the salt water spring in Athens, Annabeth looks at Percy and Percy looks at Annabeth and he thinks back to being twelve and hearing about the rivalry, and then about the chariot, and Annabeth staring at him in a smelly zoo transport truck with the most dumbfounded expression on her face like he just said the dumbest thing in the world and telling him  _ Because I’m your friend, Seaweed Brain. Any more stupid questions? _ and he decides  _ no more fighting _ and he kisses Annabeth and he thinks of songs that sounded like slow dances and holding the sky and feeling terrified of her leaving forever.

He says “The rivalry ends here,” with a finality like a death sentence. He says “I love you,” like a promise. Annabeth sighs like her whole world was rearranged and he smiles.

-

When blood drips from his nose, there is a moment where everything seems to freeze. 

Can he blood bend?

He could keep the blood off the ground if he-

He could keep all their blood off the ground if he-

Do giants have blood? Could he-

The blood hits the ground with a terrifying splatter, but not as terrifying as his heart pumping in his chest. His dad looked at him sympathetically, as if he could tell exactly what he was thinking.

-

_ “I’m scared I’m going to hurt someone.” His leg bounces erratically and he can’t stop it. “I’m scared I already did.” _

_ The demigod sitting across from him looks at Percy from over their glass, and they sigh. Dr. Hadley Moss was in high demand for their profession. Dr. Hadley Moss was probably really tired. Dr. Hadley Moss probably thought Percy was untreatable or his problems weren’t that bad. _

_ Dr. Hadley Moss was a demigod, but only secondary to that, they were a therapist. _

_ “Percy,” they say, and he leans back, feeling very sick. Dr. Moss has black hair, loose around their shoulders and kept out of the face by a bobby pin with a decorative unicorn on it. Percy had complimented on it when he came in. They told him excitedly that their child was going to be six in a week and Percy felt a nigh-instant bond to them. “Percy, who do you think you’re hurting? And why?” _

-

Percy and Annabeth go back to Goode for their Junior year with the plan to get their G.E.Ds together then go to Camp Jupiter for college. Not forever, just for college. Just for a couple of years without having to be on the front lines, without worrying about having to take care of monsters in the middle of class or the middle of the night.

Percy’s reappearance causes a great stir and he hates it because he loves to be accepted, he loves a community, but this is not a community. This is horror. This is macabre. Every student and every parent wants to dig their claws into his wounds and burrow deep inside like a worm or a parasite and figure out what makes him tick, where he was, how he's changed. 

When another person insinuates that he could do better than Annabeth, he grits his teeth and he can feel the gurgling of every drop of water in the whole damn school building and if he wanted he could redirect it all to directly below where the person was standing and force it through and douse them and bring them to their knees. He takes a deep breath, counts to ten, and remembers Annabeth's face when she saw what he could do. He tells them to fuck off instead. If there was anyone better than Annabeth, he had yet to find it.

-

When Percy is five, he asks his mom “Momma, why am I a girl?” and his mom pauses what she's doing to crouch down in front of him and say “I don't know. That's what the doctors said when you were born, but doctors are often wrong. They used to call me a boy, but we both know I'm not.”

Percy giggles, imagining his mom as a dad, but he can't. She reaches out and lightly boops his nose and asks, “Do you not feel like a girl?”

He thinks about it and concludes, “No. I'm a boy. Is that okay?” Sally hugs him tight and tells him it's perfectly fine and they stay like that for a long time.

When she pulls away she asks him “Do you want to change your name? I changed my name when I let people know I was a girl.”

“Hm.” This is a harder decision. He hadn't even thought about new names, but he realizes that all the boys he knows have different sounding names from the girls. “You chose my name when I was a baby, right? Can you choose my name too? Ooh, but can I make up the middle one?”

And Sally smiles at him and kisses the top of his head covered in black curls that he's requested to keep short for years and she says “Okay. We can think about it for a few days, and then we'll come back to each other and talk about it.”

After a few days pass, at breakfast Percy asks her, “Did you choose a name for me? I picked a name!” and she smiles over a breakfast of cereal at him.

“I've been thinking Perseus. He's the one that defeated Medusa. I've told you a couple of Greek myths, right?”

“Yeah. Can I do Percy for a nickname?”

His mom smiles some more like he's the best thing in the whole world. “Sure. What have you been thinking for a middle name?”

The newly-christened Percy sits up in his chair excitedly and exclaims “Sally!” and his mom laughs and laughs, her throat bobbing at the force.

When Percy turns seven he's too loud and he can't sit still and he can't read so all the teachers hate him. The kids in his class think he's annoying too, but nothing gets really bad until one day one of the girls comes to school calling Percy a girl.

“My dad says that Percy is actually a girl,” she tells the class smugly, like she's found the secrets to the universe and everyone eats it up. Percy stares at his desk. His teacher doesn't do a thing. “He says that he used to know Percy's mom and remembers from when Percy actually looked like a girl. Percy's not actually her name, but my dad says he can't remember what it is.”

From then on, all bets are off the table.

For months, everyone is asking him what his  _ real  _ name is and calling him a girl and blocking him from using the boy's bathroom. When he tries to tell his teacher his teacher either tiredly tells him to stop tattling or that they'll stop it only for it to never get solved.

Percy doesn't tell his mom, though. She's been seeing a new guy, Gabe, and Gabe is evil incarnate. Mom spends so much time trying to take care of Percy and clean up after Gabe and keep  _ Gabe _ from calling Percy a girl so he doesn't tell her. He can tell she's tired. 

Percy just gets angrier and angrier but keeping it under wraps until one day the girl who told everyone Percy was  _ actually _ a girl comes to school with a brand new word in her artisanal and calls him a freak and a nobody while pushing him into a corner, and then she gets right in his face and says  _ you know what you are? You're just a pathetic little tra- _

And he punches her in the face.

He's the one that gets expelled. Of course.

The ride home from the meeting with the principal and the teacher and the girl's mother where they were all screeching at the pair of them and Percy was looking at his feet and Sally was like a statue is a quiet one. They drive home in near silence until when they're almost to their building, Sally says: “Percy, violence isn't always the answer. But sometimes it is. I'm not going to say I'm not disappointed, because I am, but you are not in the wrong here. Everyone else is. They weren't listening to you when you tried to tell them what was happening, so you resorted to the only way you could.”

“Am I in trouble?” He asks quietly.

Sally purses her lips and finally tells him, “No TV for three days. And you have to go grocery shopping with me. We can try and find you another school, a little farther from here.” She pauses and then says, “You know I love you, right? You're always going to be my little boy, no matter what anyone else says. You are not pathetic or stupid or anything else anyone says about you.”

“Then why can't I read?” Percy sniffles. “And I can't stay still and I sometimes can't hear what teachers say right.”

They pull into the parking lot and Sally stops the car and turns around in her seat and looks him directly in the eye which she replies, “Percy, none of those things make you less. You're special. The things that make us different are the things that make us strong. Are you ready to go in?”

He sniffles once and then nods, and takes his momma’s hand until they get into the apartment. There will always be at least one person willing to save him if he asks.

-

**a small list of things that remind Percy Jackson of himself:**

1\. Luke Castellan. It's like taking a long look in a funhouse mirror. There are edges and parts where they're warped beyond recognition, but Percy can tell it's the same coin, two sides. As Percy nears the age Luke was when he betrayed everyone, Percy feels a great stirring of grief. He feels grief for the Luke that Percy never knew. He feels grief for the man Luke could've been. He feels grief for all the demigods who died in his service. And finally, he feels grief for himself. Luke Castellan began the Great Prophecy, and Percy's whole life bent towards it. Luke Castellan began a war that made Percy realize that he didn't always believe in fighting another god’s war. Most of all, he feels grief for the fact that Luke ruined the idea of protest, the idea of dismantling Olympus, brick by brick.

2\. Sally Jackson. Sally Jackson is one of the best people in the world and he's not afraid to say it. There was a time, back when he was fourteen or fifteen, when he was embarrassed by her. Slowly, he realized none of his friends had the same kind of relationship with their parents like he did. He could count on one hand how many of his friends had their mortal parent still alive and two closed fists were enough to track how many had a  _ good  _ relationship with their still-living mortal parent. Sally Jackson was kind and strong and smart and he didn't feel ashamed to hug her, except in the way he felt guilty for his friends. She always loved his friends, too. Nico had requested her son come do a dangerous task, the only thing that could stand a chance for Percy to live, and she hated it. But she loved Nico anyways. He loved his mom for every horrible choice she made for his sake and every moment he messed up her life but she cared for him anyway. He liked to think his mom rubbed off on him, all the good parts, all the bad parts. Self-sacrificing, caring, badass. When he didn't think he was a good person he thought of his mom. 

-

When Apollo asks for help he doesn't want to give it. He wants to ignore it all, but he takes one look at Meg and if he doesn't help her than he's not sure he can sleep right that night. If he does sleep, he'd probably get a nightmare. That being said, he almost punches Apollo in the nose. He lets them in instead.

Apollo had a nosebleed, and had bled out all over his carpet and while he was changing in the bathroom Percy narrowed his eyes at the stains. He remembered that last time he had a nosebleed. It definitely wasn't his first time since then that he wondered if he could manipulate blood.

“Sorry about that,” Apollo said, stirring Percy out of his thoughts, and he shrugged at the former god. A god bleeding on his carpet wasn't great, but it definitely wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

When they talked, Percy could tell Apollo’s heart wasn't in it, and he felt a stirring of irritation at the presumption that Percy would go out of his way to house and help him. He wouldn't turn away a demigod, but Apollo wasn't  _ really _ a demigod, even in this state, was he? He had decided a long time ago enough was enough. No more great prophecies.

“Can you turn down such glory?” Apollo asks, and Percy thinks about lost childhoods and thinking he was destined to die at sixteen and baby sisters and all the things he didn't have because of war and all the things he would miss out on if he partook in another and he shook his head and said “Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can. Sorry,” not feeling sorry at all.

-

There was something about being around a god like Apollo that just infuriated him. Meg was cool, and it was hilarious that Apollo was both human and forced into servitude by a girl no older than thirteen, but it hadn't made Apollo any more humble or gain any semblance of perspective.

He complained about the car, he complained about Percy not joining the quest, he complained about Percy not catering to any and every whim that he thought Percy should've thought of and Percy thought he was the dumbest, vainest person he had met in his entire life.

“I just… I assumed,” Apollo said in a small voice that made Percy want to throw him out of the car, “I hoped this would be taken care of by now.”

Percy looked in the rearview mirror, his face twisted into a tight, grim expression. “You mean by demigods going on a big quest to reclaim the Oracle of Delphi?” He asked in a flat voice. He wanted to ask Apollo what he was thinking, believing that demigods were always going to be there to fix the messes that gods made, but he thought of Meg sitting next to him and counted to ten in spanish when Apollo agreed. 

“Here's the thing,” Percy began in his best talking-to-stupid-people voice he had picked up from Annabeth. “To go on a quest we need a prophecy, right? Those are the rules. If there’s no Oracle, there are no prophecies, so we’re stuck in a-”

“Catch-88,” Apollo interrupted, and Percy rolled his eyes.

-

“Nosoi?”  _ Seriously? _ Percy got into a fighting stance thinking  _ really? Nosoi? Are you kidding me? And what do you mean they can't be killed?  _ “You know, I keep thinking, I have now killed every single thing in Greek mythology. But the list never seems to end.”

  
“You haven’t killed me yet,” Apollo suggested.

  
“Don’t tempt me.”

-

In a moment of weakness - being choked to death, a much younger vulnerable demigod in trouble, Apollo about to die - Percy went back on his promise to himself. He reached out in desperation for as much power as he could manage, feeling himself screaming for help, and in the middle of the field, the ground shook and broke apart to welcome a geyser. He thrust his face inside, washing the smoke, and gasped for breath. Once it was cleared away, he turned the full force of the blast onto Apollo, panting heavily.

It was like he broke a dam, because when he sneezed, several more geysers popped up, much to his chagrin. He felt like there was glass stabbing the inside of his stomach, like it hurt him to use so much power after so long of keeping it restrained. Or maybe it hurt because he was trying to push it back down. His dad had always said the sea didn't like to be restrained, and he definitely had a sea within him, churning and bubbling away. 

Percy looked at Apollo expectantly.

“...Thank you,” Apollo said. It was like pulling teeth. Percy hated him.

-

_ “Everyone. Annabeth, Nico, Mom, my little sister.” Dr. Moss raises a concerned eyebrow. “I've always been called dangerous. A liability. When I was… When I was in Tartarus, there was a monster I faced who was hurting Annabeth, and I.. Something changed in my powers.” _

_ “Why do you think you're going to hurt people, though?” They ask after they write down a few things. “Lots of demigods face an increase in their powers when in dangerous situations, and as long as you can control it-” _

_ “That's the thing,” he interrupts, leaning forwards. “I'm scared I can't control it. I've gotten so powerful, and it's just more dangerous, and it frightens people. I've seen what stupid amounts of power can do to a person. I'm scared of becoming a monster, scaring and hurting the people I care about. I'm scared I AM a monster but I just haven't dealt with it yet.” _

_ They tap their pen against their chin for several seconds, and Percy wipes his hands on his shirt. It's nerve-wracking to say that all out loud. “Percy, have you heard-” Percy looks up at them when they begin to speak like they've found a cure, “-of the idea that only good people worry if they're a good person? I don't think that's completely true, but it certainly is up to a point. May I ask, do you act on any bad compulsions you may have?” _

_ Percy shrugs, looking down at his feet like he's seven and in the principal's office again, everyone screaming ‘what’s wrong with you why did you do that?’ _

-

When Estelle is born, Percy is the third person to hold her, Annabeth the fourth, with only their parents ahead in line. Everybody cries great big tears, and Percy remembers the wedding of Gabe Ugliano and Sally Jackson and he thinks about her lying by omission. Sally cried at his birth, Percy cries at Estelle’s. 

When Percy holds Estelle, he can feel her little heartbeat and the movement of blood through her veins, and he can feel the movement of water on every person's face in the room and he hands her to Annabeth.

-

**a small list of things that Percy Jackson probably does a little too early in life:**

1\. Come out. It is definitely not too early for him or his mom, but he hears comments sometimes from teachers or classmates when they don't think he can hear them, talking about how young he is and how that Sally Jackson surely must've corrupted him with her own trans status and being a single parent and my oh my have you heard about what a delinquent that Percy is? 

2\. Kill someone. You shouldn't kill anyone at any age, but he thinks twelve is definitely, absolutely too young. He thinks he kills his mom and he thinks he kills his teacher and he kills monsters and when he and his mom get Medusa’s head, he gives it to her and tells her in words unspoken  _ you don't have to live like this anymore _ and he is a partner-in-crime, an accomplice to a murder of a mortal. And then for years afterward, he keeps killing. Killing killing killing, until he is back where he started, once again an accomplice to the murder of Luke Castellan. And with his death, some small part in his heart left untraumatized is murdered too.

3\. Get engaged. When Percy and Annabeth are eighteen-almost-nineteen Annabeth says to him one night when they're cuddling in bed “Let's get married,” and Percy looks at her like she hung all the stars in the sky and asks “What?” and she replies “Oh, not now. Years in the future. I just mean-” and then she sighs. He brushes the frizzy hair out of her face and questions, “You just mean…?” and she sighs again. “Let's get engaged,” she finally tells him. “Like a promise ring type of engagement. I don't think I actually want to get married until we're like, twenty-eight.” Annabeth buries her head in his chest and he kisses the top of her hair and agrees, “Yeah. Let's get engaged. No marriage until our mid-twenties.” She giggles softly into his shirt and he wants to scream out a window at the top of his lungs  _ HE IS NOW ENGAGED TO ANNABETH FUCKING CHASE _ but he doesn't, he just laughs giddily into her neck and then falls asleep with her warm in his arms. They talk about it in the morning to agree that it wasn't just a sleep-exhausted conversation that they no longer believe in now that it's morning, and then they tell his parents and Sally drops her coffee cup and breaks a mug.

-

When Annabeth and Percy go to Camp Jupiter for college, they make it clear to Reyna, Hazel, Frank, and everybody that they will not be participating in anything the army has to offer. They're just there to learn at a place that will give them ample protection and a course load that will suit the fact that they have ADHD/Dyslexia.

They spend their time studying and doing classes and taking well-deserved naps and drinking hot chocolate at cafes and they sign autographs for keen demigods, laughing at the top of their lungs.

It takes four months and lots of begging but eventually, they give in and teach the new recruits a couple of sword-fighting techniques. He feels a rush of happiness, sparring against Annabeth for the first time in months, and she curses him out in words that the recruits should definitively  _ not _ be hearing when he uses the water cooler to spray her, and Hazel and Frank and Percy just laugh and laugh and eventually Annabeth does too.

-

One thing Percy doesn't notice, not the way he should've, is how Annabeth is being eaten from the inside out.

She seems to get sadder as the months pass, more tired, and Percy doesn't know how to help her. He knows if he pushes her too hard, she'll never tell him what's wrong with her. All he can hope for is if he acts like everything is normal and that he'll always be willing to listen to her, she'll eventually come to him. They always help each other with their problems, and they always have. Because he loves her.

When things seem to change in December in a way he can't put his finger on, he starts having old nightmares again. Nightmares about Annabeth's terrified face and nightmares about Annabeth saying that they can't be together anymore and Percy scrambles to try and be as reassuring as possible. He doesn't wake her up to help him through his nightmares because if it seems like  _ he's _ breaking down, she won't want to come to him when  _ she's _ breaking down. It doesn't stop at the nightmares. Soon, he starts feeling the water rushing through the pipes. He can feel the water in the whole entire building, whole entire city, and it's so anxiety-inducing and it brings on so many headaches with the absolute overload of power and it makes him hate waking up in the morning.

In January, Annabeth suddenly goes missing.

It's not very long, but he can't contact her and suddenly his powers go into overdrive and he can't even help with the search because if he doesn't stay, pushing down on his power with all his might, things are going to start exploding.

Annabeth comes back a week later and finally confesses she dropped out and Percy feels relief. Relief she's back, relief she told him, and relief because he can feel the water slow, no longer thrashing about, shoving the glass in his stomach deeper. 

Percy feels scared. He almost couldn't control himself.

-

_ “I try not to,” Percy finally tells Dr. Moss. “It's one thing to be evil. It's another thing altogether to act evil.” _

_ “Exactly.” Percy looks up at Dr. Moss, who looks incredibly smug and a little relieved, an expression he often recognizes from Annabeth. “Percy, what kind of thoughts do you have that make you believe you're evil?” _

_ He shrugs and his legs bounce hard against the floor. “It's less thoughts and more… Hm. So, I'm not keen on gods. A lot of them are, frankly, morally repugnant a lot of the time, and they have power, and this power corrupted them. At the same time, I literally went to war at sixteen because a guy hated gods so much. I keep seeing myself in him, and he did horrible things. I just feel like I'm going to end up like either one of them.” _

_ Dr. Moss nods and shoves their glasses farther up their nose, smiling at him. “Percy, these kinds of ideas I want to bring up and deal with at another session, when we have more time to unpack them and potentially calm you down if they bring up triggering topics, but there is one thing I'd like to say.” _

_ “Go on.” _

_ “Percy, you're right about there being a difference between being evil and acting evil, but honestly, I don't think they're as black and white as that statement might lead you to believe.” _

_ “What do you mean?” _

_ “I believe that a person just starts like that. A person. Not good, but not evil either. It's not some predetermined dungeons and dragons alignment, where it's the whole basis of how you act morally.” _

_ “That game is so good.” _

_ “Right? But anyways, Percy, in my opinion, someone only becomes evil by constantly choosing to do bad things. Sometimes we do or say something mean, but it doesn't automatically make us a mean person. However, consciously choosing over and over again to do horrible things does come and make a person horrible.” _

_ “Oh.” _

-

Percy goes out of his way not to hurt or scare people. So much in his life tells him he has the power to hurt, but Percy refuses to be defined by this.

He's been around horrible drunks before, and he doesn't drink. He's not the kind of person to hurt those he cares about, but he wants control over his actions and powers and getting drunk seems like a great way to lose both.

He's seen people abandon Annabeth, people she's really really cared about, and he can tell she's always going to be scared he'll abandon her too. So every day, he looks at her, and he chooses Annabeth. It's always Annabeth. He would and always will choose Annabeth. When she holds his hand and kisses him gently and laughs into his mouth when cheesy love songs come on during sex, he chooses her and she chooses back.

-

_ “Do you get what I'm trying to say?” They ask him and he nods absently. _

_ “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. Choose good.” _

_ “Choose good. Choose kindness. It doesn't mean you can't be sad, or angry, or annoyed, but it does mean you can choose what to do with these feelings.” _

_ “Choose good. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Thank you.” _

_ Dr. Hadley Moss bares her teeth in a large, bright grin, and Percy smiles back at her. “It's what I'm here for. I believe we're out of time. I expect to see you again, Mr. Jackson.” _

_ Percy laughs, nods, and heads for the door, the pressure in his chest lighter than it has been in a long time. _

-

Annabeth began knitting, and Percy began baking. Separate actions together at the same time. It was comfortable. It was nice. Annabeth would work curled up on the couch, Percy worked just a couple of feet away in the kitchen, and to fill the silence, they would put on podcasts in the background.

First, it was just the news, but that got boring fast, and they moved on to funnier podcasts and, eventually, story-driven podcasts. One they really liked was a dungeons and dragons podcast by three sons of one of the muses and their father. 

It was funny. It was sad. It was good.

And one day, while Annabeth was working on a new blanket and Percy was trying to get the lattice right on a pie, it said something;

_ What if you didn’t have to worry and you could just cut out the bullshit and do good recklessly? _

Percy paused it, rewound it, and listened to it again.

“What's wrong, Perce?” Annabeth asked from her place at the couch.

“Nothing,” he replied distantly, before breaking into a grin that split his face apart. “Absolutely nothing.”

-

**a small list of things that Percy Jackson can do:**

1\. He chooses anger. He lets his emotions get the better of him. He becomes the next Luke Castellan, not willing to move on by any means that aren't ripping Olympus into pieces with his own bare hands.

2\. He chooses horror. He lets himself become a monster. He uses his power for the worst things imaginable, and doesn't even care. He doesn't even get fazed by the terror-stricken faces of his friends and family. He just lets his power burst from him like a hurricane, and he destroys without a care.

3\. He chooses fear. He spends the rest of his days paralyzed with a numb fright that he won't be able to control himself, that he's just a being of unspeakable evil waiting to bubble over. He feels anxious and depressed and stays in bed sick for days because of how much force he's using to keep his power down all while unknowingly pulling it up.

4\. Or, Percy Jackson chooses good.

**Author's Note:**

> hi thanks for reading my very confusing character study(?) fic that i wrote in two days. i love dark percy but the other day i posted about percy knowing he could do so much damage but choosing to be good and i found it more impactful than any dark percy au could ever be.
> 
> if you need anything else tagged TELL ME! also feel free to ask me about anything you need clarification for for the universe that which i have constructed. like yes i think they go to camp jupiter college yes i think annabeth drops out but percyannabeth getting engaged that young is not typically in my ~world~ i just read the concept of them getting engaged at 17 and then not getting married for like nine years but they still have a kid together and i found it HILARIOUS
> 
> anyways sorry for the shifting tenses and confusing formatting xoxo unbetad all mistakes r my own check my shit out at [my tumblr](https://selkiecoded.tumblr.com)


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